OPINION: The hate has always been here. But now it’s boiling over, and it’s become more socially acceptable to let white-nationalist, misogynistic, even murderous flags fly (by Jenn Jefferys/TVO)
I think it would be more accurate to say that the people driving this hatred no longer care about being socially acceptable.
it is no longer socially unacceptable
It still is socially unacceptable in actual society.
The problem is they’ve found a micro-community who also embraces similar (and often worse) anti-social ideas and behaviors, and has convinced these losers that their dumb ideas are reasonable.
Maybe in university educated society. Any blue collar work place, lots of men’s sports teams, etc. has these problems in my experience. When I shifted careers in my 30s from the office to a construction site I was blown away by how right wing everyone was while working for a union.
We see this also, perhaps most frighteningly, in toxic-masculinity-laden rabbit holes online, where young men can find easy answers and welcoming brotherhood communities with those who have similar grievances.
“Through most of the 20th century, men were always the default character. The protagonists,” Morrison tells me. Now that is changing — and they’re mad. Really mad. It’s this “politics of grievance,” Morrison says,
This is the pot calling the kettle black. Equality alone isn’t the source of white male anger, it’s a broad sense of not knowing where they fit anymore and easy (and wrong) answers online.
This is an insightful read on the topic, starting from male college enrollment and working downwards:
We should be embracing egalitarian views and discussing the issues affecting men and women, and we should be having more conversations about what’s hurting men without dumbing it down to “they’re white and angry”, because that’s only stoking anger and driving people away.
I think if you dig into it you’d find a lot of men are hurting in our economy, feel trapped by our reliance on degrees for training, and don’t feel included in communities anymore. Men have traditionally needed to be breadwinners and that view hasn’t changed much (see the divorce rate of unemployed men, or statistics that women don’t tend to date lower earners than themselves (I think OKCupid wrote about it)), and frankly the collapse of manufacturing amid globalization has killed an area that typically men excell at and gave the majority a path towards a comfortable life.
Then there is a large group capitalizing on this and pushing the easy narrative of anger, and another large group overlooking all these men who are hurting and blaming them. It’s not so simple, and we all need to work on solving it.
What’s happening is social media.
You have a bigot, what do you do about it?
Sure you can punch the bigot. Violence begets violence; might fix the problem or make it worse.
So what do you? Confront them. Then if they don’t change their ways, you shun them. Generally people don’t like being excluded, so slowly but surely the bigots would reform and some would die alone with their hatred.
Now? They have online platforms where they find each other through algorithms that encourages those behaviors because it makes them money.
You want to reduce the hatred on society? Police properly the big social medias.
This is absolutely true: social media has allowed these groups to network, and the same algorithm that knows to feed me pictures of cute dogs to keep me on the platform also knows it helps to feed Nazi-adjacent rage-bait to keep vulnerable people engaged.
A huge, huge thing we could do is force social media companies to change to a simple, chronological algorithm, instead of one that’s predicated on feeding users rage-bait.
People aren’t willing enough to speak out. We have a culture of apathy.
As a white guy I feel like I’ve been labeled by people who should know why that’s uncool.
Did…did you just try to make this about yourself?
The article might not be about that person you are replying to in particular, but the subject of the article is “white men.” The language the article uses implies that every single one of them is being infected with hatred, and we know that is just factually incorrect.
The mayor of my small rural town participated in our Pride week, he is a cis/straight/white male that I don’t need to feel afraid of.
As a mixed race(Métis) Canadian living in the UK. It’s been really fucking weird, back home I’m pegged immediately as being part First Nations. Here I’m just another white guy, and it’s really been a huge adjustment. Gotten into an argument with a Afro/Caribbean/Brit during one of the lockdowns about standing inches away from me with their mask off and coughing on me.
And when they said: You fuckin white people…
I was like, Holy shit, I’m no longer seen as a person of colour.
It really fucked with me for a few weeks.It’s faux pas to even defend yourself, or question the framing of a dialogue or call out legitimate direct discrimination. If you think labeling an entire group as the evil enemy is going to make the bad actors or moderates in the group more likely to align with you, you are an idiot. On Reddit I moved to the leftist subreddit /r/onguardforthee when /r/Canada became too right wing and I’d started to see directly bigoted comments more often.
I got banned from the new subreddit for saying “hey maybe calm down with the direct racism and sexism here. We should be better than those we criticize.”
If you’re defending “the bad ones” you’re the enemy.
I’ve been thoroughly egalitarian and anti-bigotry my entire life. I’ve also been beaten until my eyes were swollen shut in school by people I didn’t know, and punished for “instigating with racist language” that I would never use because the older two kids knew it would get them out of trouble. I was just waiting to get into the library to read a book.
I’ve been accused countless times of racism working in retail because of things I had no control over. (Shout out to my old manager Om for calling out their bullshit)
I’ve been told in no uncertain terms by another manager that I would not have been hired if they were there at the start because they “do not hire men.”
I’ve been told countless times I should not even be allowed to speak or have an opinion due to the body I was born into. That any action I take is directly unfair or harmful regardless of my intent or reasoning. I don’t define myself or others by their bodies. Nobody chose their body.
Etc.
Would you think defending this sort of behavior really helps to reduce bigotry?
It’s really just making me hate all of humanity. Everyone is terrible and being reasonable is an unforgivable sin on every side.
No nuance is allowed. If you don’t agree with incredibly broad generalizations, you are evil. American history and culture is globally applicable and enforced.
I just want people to stop judging and mistreating others for things they have no control over. I guess I deserve to be hated or mistreated for that alone.
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